The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-06-18

one in three; but his utterance is as
distinct and clear as that of Moses:
''There is one God even the Father,
and thou shalt worship him only"
Having assumed the existence and the
government of the one only living and
true God, his mission was to unfold the
character of God and the relation that
he sustains to man, and man to him,
and the duties that they owe to him
and one another. The rudiments of his
teachings in this regard, are few and
simple: "God is thy Father, and man is
thy BROTHER" is the central and funda-
mental truth Of the whole in theory,
and ''Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as
thyself,' is the sum of all duty in prac-
tice. And now my position is that the
man who would hope to secure to him
self religion that shall be worthy of a
man-that shall guide him in all duties,
and sustain him in all trials, and in
death itself, must build upon this foun-
dation. He must take these truths as
his axioms-he must admit them as es-
tablished and hold them sacred from
the beginning to the end, and he will
find religion growing up into an harmo-
NOUS and beautiful system to be loved
and cherished. And if, at any time, he
forgets these first principles, or any one
OF them, he will wander into error and
be lost in its mazes. If he so far COM
promises the doctrine of one only liv-
ing and true God, as to admit that there
are three distinct and equal persons in
the godhead, he will Immediately find
mist and confusion coming over all his
conceptions of God, and he will be per-
picked with the question, which of the
three persons is entitled to supreme
devotion; and you will find him pray
ing sometimes to one and sometimes
to the other and sometimes to the
three together. If he makes God any
thing less than Father, he will soon
come to be an object Of dread and fear,
instead of filial love and reverence.
And if he makes man anything less
than a child of God and brother, he
will soon sink him down to mass of
depravity, and make him an object Of
hatred instead of love. And so it is
that you cannot spare these first princi-
pies. You cannot depart from them
at all without involving evil.
Theoretically and nominally these
great doctrines are recognized and &C.
knowledged, in whole or in part, by
the various systems of the day. No
man pretends, in this country at least,
to offer any new theory of religion
without claiming for it this much at
least: that it recognizes one God who
is in some sense the Father, and that it
acknowledges in some sort the broth
erhood of man.
Mormonism and the whole brood of
fanaticisms and superstitions, with
which the age is rife, are, in Difference
to the fxedness of thsse truths, COM
PEELED to pay that much of respect to
them.
Practically, however, they are greatly
ignored. The unity is transformed
into Trinity. The Father fades away
and is changed into stern and relent-
less ruler and king-the brotherhood of
man gives place to the brotherhood of a
sect or party, and the law of love is
transformed into the law of retaliation.
If we take the law of love and consider
| it, in reference to that rule of its mani
| festation which seeks to overcome evil
with good, we shall lind that all Christ
ian doctrine and practice proceed upon
that principle. God himself works by
it, and by means of it works out all
human redemption. He saw the world
alienated from him and his ways, and
engaged in the practice Of sin and in
| EQUITY, and he undertook to win man
back to himself. Howp In no other
way, but the display or manifestation
of that great love wherewith he loved
them; thus, seeking to overcome their
evil by the abundance of his own good
ness. To this end Christ came and la
! bored and suffered and died and rose
again from the dead and this single
principle pervades the whole gospel
system, from the beginning to the end
of it. This, too, is the rule that it re-
quires man to follow in all his inter-
! course with his fellow man. Hence,
though in doctrine we may find many
particulars yet, when we have said
that God is the supreme ruler and the
loving Father of all men the rule of
whose moral government it is to over
come evil with good, we have touched
the cornerstone which supports the
whole fabric-we have given the key
that will unlock all the mysteries of the
kingdom of Christ. He who thoroughly
understands this, understands all the
rest. He who understands this not, is
ignorant of all. And so in morals we
may find particular precepts of rare
value, but we may sum them all up in
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